Rock Springs, Wyoming.

Girl sitting across room, phosphorescent eyes. Neolithic shadows close in. Red hats, work boots. Her teeth: brown, broken. Mouth twisted into lugubrious smile.

Close eyes, inhale chemicals.

Wind howls gray through emptiness. Abrasive sound, cold steel pierces ear drums. Oblivious rodents, black filth. Emission leaves surroundings traumatized. Darting eyes of degraded virgin avoid contact.

Paint tears in long strips. Makeshift porches, lawn ornaments. Discarded motorized vehicles of diverse stylistic construction. Black mongrel yelps, metal toe-cap shatters ribs. Coagulation of bodily fluid in corners of mouth.

Blond hair bounces with contact of feet upon asphalt ground. Laughing, taunting jeers ejaculate from red truck. Oil dripping upon ground like acidic venom. Empty hooks in rear window. Malevolent stupidity shoots from empty pupils. Opinions printed on latex medium.

Blue eyes struggle against surface tension of black waters.

Metallic odor fills room. Diseased phallus searches for gap in surface. Relentless thrusting, dopamine eruption. Unaffected receiver. Hungry eyes focus on clear pebbles.

Gray hand covers dark orifice. Crippling stench violates nostrils as pulsating cock vomits.

Insatiable hunger. Parasitic worms chew tissue.

Vacuous. Purple lips cover metal tip. Leeches momentarily subside.

Foreman fingers pouches. Leans contentedly against red truck, watching ants. Sun penetrates sky. Indistinguishable horizon. Menacing laughter emits from cold pipes.

Cal showing signs of fatigue, 36th consecutive hour. Gray vagueness slithers through brain.

Foreman’s hand clasps shoulder reassuringly. Relief of ignorance. Like a small child brainwashed into believing a sexual relationship with a parent is normal, he takes a deep breath, thinking everything will be fine.

Cells ravenously consume the alchemic concoction of pharmaceutical and automotive products. Hands work efficiently, carrying out instructions without hesitation or interpretation.

Hemp beads dangle from skinny neck. Pure, white flesh. Blue retinas, distorted through bloodshot veil. Generic simplicity, craving unavailable culture. Alcoholic father curses under breath, looks upon his offspring with obvious disgust. Passive matron turns back, focusing on kitchen duties. Tears fall on tile of black countertop.

The natural, yellow smoke has become boring. Inevitable. Like a spoiled child, bored with the monotony of only one toy soldier.

Empty pupils watch from another dimension. Reassurance, unperceived notation of expensive sneakers. Exploitation of naivety.

Nonexistent conscience. Coaxes oblivious prey.

Russet discourse overwhelms yielding mind. Corpses leer at naïve square, unaware of small town’s hierarchy. Eager lips suck tip of the glass penis, searching for resuscitation from the void of emptiness. The perpetually erect phallus meanders between orifices. Member smells the flower.

Timid orifice reluctantly accepts.

Hymen bursts in an explosion of burgundy.

Leeches attach to cells.

Sloppy brown tongue flicks through eroded teeth. Smell of shit, stale sweat, semen, burning chemicals. Remnants of artificial slop. Greedy eyes scrutinize faded wall paper. Stifled remorse lingers at bottom of stomach.

Precious stones melt into seething puddle of comfort and insanity. Faithfully, reptilian rodent laps up meal, vomits the contents into his pet’s dish.

Carl looks at his brother malevolently. Brief expression speaks louder than words. Dennis may as well have just told him that he has been cutting the shit, knocking just enough off the top to keep his leeches satisfied.

Hushed whispers in hallway. Incredulous looks, disgust. Sickened expressions, refusal to accept. Gossip seeps from mouths like clouds of dark smoke.

He ignores them. Staring at the hallway stretching before him, he fantasizes about taking their lives in an orgiastic feast of blind rage.

Elise woke up the next morning, late. The stale taste of semen and low-quality marijuana lingered on her taste buds. She looked in the mirror. Her torn clothing and frayed hair mocked her once bright potential. The strap of her red brassiere hung limply, past her shoulder blade.

She scraped the dried puddle of chemicals from the pipe. A burning sensation shot from her groin, through her nerves, along her spinal chord. Hurriedly, she placed a few crystals in the bowl with her trembling hands.

The fumes slithered into Coulter’s nasal cavities. He stirred as she inhaled the priceless gas. The electrical current calmed her momentarily. The worms loosened their grip, subsiding into a dormant state. Staring deep into her pupils through the mirror, she eased her purple lips over the tip of the gun, using that subtle tease that she had mastered when she was eleven.

Baby screams under relentless torment of slithering apparitions.

Her mother stumbles into the room. Written on her forehead: purple memoirs of insanity. Shaky time-line of child’s food schedule is hazy under gray clouds of battery acid.

Purple face. Tear glands reach for nonexistent moisture. Stomach begins eating itself. Child vomits stream of bile speckled with red dots.

Blue uniform, shadowy corridor. Paranoid eyes analyze through glass. Specter of chemical deconstruction overpowering as he enters. Empty faces stare with glazed eyes. Sepulchral silence. Works dripping red. Still hard after intercourse.

Insatiable blue tubes, aphrodisiac of starving cells creates frenzy. Silver badge sparkles under light of a single ray, seeping in through gap in tin foil. His vein accepts penetration, impatiently awaiting alleviation from incessant itch.

Mother worm lays hundreds of eggs. The air is polluted with a stench of burning acid as the process continues. She adjusts her meager shades of concealment. The only time of vulnerability for the leech is during the ritualistic reproduction.

She ravenously consumes over half of the glassy eggs.

Content, slithers to the male’s hiding place to eat his internal organs.

Cal watched the machine peel off his skin like a rapist tearing away the clothing of a victim. Ethereal tendons pulsate in the cold light of disillusioned sun. The churning cogs create an inescapable vortex. Pieces of Cal splatter on uniforms of former co-workers. Philip touches a piece of sticky flesh, licks his finger. The wind beckons through the gray morning, a reminder of the final escape.

The beads bounce on the frantic Adam’s apple. His blue eyes roll back into his skull. His flesh noticeably changing shades⎯white, transparent.

Wraithlike faces loom, schizophrenic monks, virgin sacrifice.

“We have to call his parents.”

“I will shoot you if you call anyone.”

The large worm slithers across the middle of the living room floor. Dingy light reflects off black skin.

Exhausted, the heart ejaculates in a final explosion, too weak to dam the flood.

The rats’ minds focus on the worm, lost reality. Willingly succumb. Partake in self-administered rodenticide.

Tucks coat over protruding corner of brown package. Palms drip perspiration. Walks through front office. Serpentine eyes of secretary cut through rodent flesh, laden with indefatigable parasites. Moisture seeps through collar of expensive brown shirt.

Pictures of crime scene flit across tainted mind. The dead children grouped in a pile on the floor, their purple faces twisted into horrific shapes. Inaudible screams gnaw at the gray tissue.

“Hello Mr. Wendling. Have a seat.”

Burning neon lights penetrate skin, nearly shining through his hollow body. Places the cardboard package on stainless steel table.

Red tie of state superintendent mocks sagging cheeks of once incorruptible mayor. Black maggots stifle conscience.

Overwhelming warmth as he fingers the packet of crystals in breast pocket.

Adam holds out bill, hand shaking. Catatonic eyes. Point to room. Needle still in arm as esophagus constricts under relentless pressure of larval assassin.

Reia walks down the hallway, smiling. He begins to feel blood coagulating in his phallus. He nods to them. Smacking gum, laughter. Tumescent eyes. Stench of marijuana and booze seep from generic clothing. The cold metal brushes Reia’s skin under his shirt. Retinas focus in a laser beam of concentrated hatred.

Stale sweat gathers in crevices of navy clothing. Lights reflect off silver badge. Creaking wood of staircase bends under weight. Rat with snake eyes glides between doorways. Crackly jabber disarrays mental processes. He watches the innards of the worm penetrate the flesh as pressure increases from his foot. He kicks down the door to reveal the parallel universe of tweaker time. Corpses register presence, mental connections too frayed to make bodies move.

Gunderman hears the child screaming in the next room. The purple face sickens him. He raises his gun, aims at baby, fires. He waits for tweaker parents, watches innards splatter against filthy wallpaper. Hail of shotgun pellets burrows through his skull.

Abandoned houses. Closed food chains. Vultures loom, scavenging wreckage. Dissected machines enveloped in rust, field of discarded human beings.

Sickly leeches starve from lack of flesh. Mother eats all eggs produced. Her body discards the overindulgence. She vomits withered bodies in stream of black bile.

City Hall debates.

The cold eyes of the reptilian rodent dart between corridors. Each creak sends currents of raw electricity through the starving cells of the spinal chord.

She sits naked on the piss-and-shit-stained mattress. Pervading feelings of emptiness, degradation. As she lifts her fingers from her black satin panties, she faints at sight of blood on fingertips.

Invisible wall of negativity.

Chris’ dad comes home from a double shift. He takes a shot of whiskey before looking at his child. Chris runs exuberantly to his father, shows him a picture of the ocean he drew at school.

He mumbled, “Yeah that’s great.”

His child’s pupils grew to accept a lifetime of disappointment.

Something is missing.

Jarrod rips the cushions from the couch.

An agent peers through the window from the top of a hill, miles away. Jarrod blocks view, remembers insecurity of phone line, rips the telephone from the wall. The empty compartments mock.

Idiosyncratic neurosis.

Shit streams in a gray mass of clay. The tenants below intentionally make noise in their kitchen.

Fantastical scenes of rape flit across recesses of mind. Woman will be prey when her husband is at work. A pitiful drip of spittle drips from his phallus, plops on the puddle of shit in the toilet.

Ducks under mirror. Avoids recording equipment.

Keys jingle tauntingly as feet descend to parking lot. Steps in a puddle of oil and anti-freeze, kicks feet against side panel of red truck before getting in.

Languid face answers door, motions lifelessly to next room.

His father eagerly achieving imaginary feats through medium of computer chips, plastic and glass.

Jarrod fingers hand-gun inside coat pocket. Puts the gun to his father’s furry, scaled forehead.

City council gathers around wooden table to engage in meth-fueled circle jerk.

Invisible wall steals consciousness, helps them forget.

Billions of red capsules filter in and out of machinery. Reptilian rodents beg owners to fill food trays. Vacant faces conspire against each other, shaking hands, signing papers. Indefinable figures pour clear pellets into filthy troughs. Rodents squeal with delight as fantasy of fixation becomes reality. Generic establishments of infinite monotony line streets. Hopeless landscape.

This has all happened before.

Packets of emptiness line convenience store shelves under glaring fluorescent lights. The mother of the litter shits in own den as hints of green appear behind tumescent eyes. Tumbleweeds scamper across the empty roads, smirking as the ideals of past societies disintegrate into the wind. Virtually invisible leeches invade ear canals of unsuspecting rodent. Serpentine tongue flicks between rat’s yellow teeth. Shiny carriages compare phallus sizes. Groups of isolated indigenous cultures compromise ideals under stress of humanistic tendencies. Streams of artificial consciousness feed hunger of base rodents.

Bio: J.J. Anselmi goes to school at UCD and works in an industrial book labyrinth. He also plays drums in his noisy hardcore band, Sherman to the Fucking Sea.